The Wheel of the Year cont. - Litha and Lughnasdh
Next in the calendar, we have Litha, the Sabbat taking place on the summer solstice. Many Wiccans hold this Sabbat as a time for re-dedications of your faith, as well as being a celebration ripe for divination related to love and romance, with the primary focus of the Sabbat being on the element of Fire, and the Horned God.
Once again, we find that the name for the festival, as well as the rites themselves, are not pre-Christian. The name for the Sabbat is found, once more, in Bede the Venerable’s “The Reckoning of Time” in the section where he discusses the calendar systems that had fallen out of use. More specifically, Ærra Līþa (translating to Before Midsummer, or First Summer) and Æftera Līþa (translating to After Midsummer, or Second Summer) with the two months corresponding to the modern Gregorian months of June and July.
When it comes to the actual day, commonly falling anywhere from the 21st to the 24th, the only celebration with known rites and of a notable age (and of European origin given the central location of the fanwork's setting) is Christian. Saint John’s Eve, more specifically, centered on Saint John the Baptist, focusing on his birth instead of death as is usual for Saint days. One could use the festival of Fors Fortuna, the festival dedicated, aptly, to Fortuna the Roman goddess of luck, falling on the 24th per Ovid’s Fasti (sometimes translated as The Book of Days or On the Roman Calendar), though the festival had “undisclosed rituals” to quote Sandra Billington’s The Concept of the Goddess and is, thus, rather unhelpful.
Next, we move on to the Sabbat variant of Lughnasadh, sometimes called Lammas. Wiccan tradition holds that the Sabbat is celebrated on the 1st or 2nd of August and that rituals practiced during the Sabbat are to be related to harvest and gratitude, aiming to recognize the manifestations of your intentions. Bread-making is placed as a common way to mark the holiday, and corn dollies (a type of poppet) are to be used in your spellwork.
To truly explain the errors, we shall have to dive into the mythology surrounding the original festival. Lughnasadh, in myth, was founded by the god Lugh. Lugh was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann (the supernatural beings thought to be the pre-Christian deities of Ireland) and was portrayed as, and associated with many things. He was shown as a warrior and a king, a craftsman and a savior. He was skilled in the arts, associated with oaths and truth and law, a determiner of rightful kingship. He had many epithets, Lámfada, meaning “long hand” either for his skill with the spear or his ability to rule. Ildánach, meaning “skilled in many arts”. Samildánach, meaning “equally skilled in all arts”. Lonnansclech, meaning “fierce”, “strong”, or “combative”. Lonnbéimnech, meaning “fierce striker”. Macnia, meaning “young warrior” or “young hero”.
When Lugh goes to Tara, to join the Tuatha Dé Danann, his father’s people, to join the court of King Nuada, he offers his service as a wright or smith, a champion or swordsman, a harpist or hero, a poet or historian, a sorcerer or craftsman, gaining entrance only when he asks if the King has someone in his court who can fill all these roles. When he joins the court, he joins the Tuatha Dé Danann when they live under the oppression of the Fomorians, seeing how meekly they accept the treatment. Nuada, hoping he may free them from their oppression, gives him command over the Tuatha Dé Danann, and Lugh prepares for war. In the death of his father, he acquires artifacts as payment from the murderers and uses them to lead the Second battle of Mag Tuireadh, where he kills Balor the Tyrant, his own grandfather, and frees the Tuatha Dé Danann from the rule of the traitorous, half-Fomorian king, Bres.
He founded the Assembly of Talti, the Tailteann Games, when the battle ends, the games acting as a mourning ceremony for his foster mother Tailtiu, and being held during the last fortnight of July, culminating in Lughnasadh. The games themselves served three functions. Honoring the dead, proclaiming laws, and funeral games and festivities to entertain the participants. Guests would sing mourning chants and druids would improvise Cepógs, songs memorializing the dead, before burning them on a funeral pyre. Kings would attend under truce for the celebration, athletic and sporting contests would be held, music and storytelling traded, and trial marriages entered.
During Lughnasadh bilberries were gathered, eating and drinking partaken, folk music performed, contests held, pilgrimages up the mountains to the hosting site performed. Some places would have flowers worn that were buried to mark summer’s end, some places had the first sheaf of the harvest buried, bulls sacrificed, and clootie wells visited. It was a time of little food, and of unpredictable weather.
Lughnasadh is not just about the harvest, it is an element but it is not the whole. Lughnasadh is about mourning and grief, and finding joy in your community. It is about perseverance through hardship, about weathering the storm with your loved ones even if it is not easy, it is about the dangerous seasons that are coming, and holding those you love close.
Stripping Lughnasadh of the Games, stripping it of its mythological and cultural significance strips the heart of the festival. These Sabbats strip the meaning from the few festivals they steal their name from, but the festivals centered on community and mourning and the dead? It guts them.